(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer-readable recording medium where a document management program for managing a correction history of a document is recorded and a document management apparatus and a document management method for managing a correction history of a document and, more particularly, to a computer-readable recording medium where a document management program for managing a document updated by a plurality of users is recorded and a document management apparatus and a document management method for managing a document updated by a plurality of users.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Various documents are prepared and reported in organizations (such as enterprises, government offices, and self-governing bodies). In order to report to other divisions and high executives, a document prepared in some division is changed with some aim and is passed.
The original value of many documents, such as papers, is heightened by corrections made by many reviewers. Therefore, with documents of this kind making corrections in organizations has a great advantage.
On the other hand, if a document in which a problem at a job site is described in detail is corrected, facts are falsely reported and there is a risk that the problem will not come into the open. For example, the contents of the original document may be exaggerated, glorified, or suppressed by a person whose hands the document passes through. That is to say, an information manipulation may be performed. If such a state continues and infiltrates as the culture of an organization, the morals or morale of the organization falls and abuses occur in the activities themselves of the organization.
Accordingly, it is necessary to record the contents of a change made in the document. By recording what changes are made, an unjust information manipulation can be found. A change process can be retained by the use of, for example, the correction history store function of word processor software. In addition, a technique for comparing each line of a changed document with an original and for putting a correction mark indicative of being corrected on a line of the changed document including a correction is disclosed (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 08-147292).
With the conventional technique, however, it is impossible to know information transparency in a large-scale organization. In this case, information transparency indicates whether information is correctly reported to high executives in the organization regardless of whether a fact included in the information is good or bad.
With the conventional technique, a correction is indicated only by a mark or the like and the purpose in making the correction cannot be seen. Accordingly, if a correction is made in a document many times, it is difficult to judge whether an information manipulation, such as suppressing a fact, is included in these corrections. In addition, it is impossible to know whether an organization has a tendency to suppress information.
Accordingly, so far there have been no proper methods for sensing various abuses (abuse of problems at job sites not being reported correctly to high executives, the abuse of information being suppressed, and the like) in organizations. Whether information is suppressed can be conjectured by performing, for example, a questionnaire on employee awareness. However, abuses in organizations could not be observed directly. Therefore, it is impossible to objectively determine the degree of each abuse. Moreover, a questionnaire is expensive and it is impossible to carry out an observation timely (at any time).